Crude vulgarisations if not confronted will get into the history books

Mar 21, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – I am hoping that decent Guyanese with vast experience in Guyanese contemporary history will intervene to stop literal asininities and crude irrationalities from masking as academic analysis.
This vulgarisation is a threat to democracy. But more importantly, it is an assault on the psychology of the huge percentage of young people we have in this country. When depraved fiction is passed on to them as historical and current facts, then we arrive at a stage where alternative facts replace genuine history.
Two depravities need to be energetically consigned to the rubbish heap. One item is about the despicable attack on the Private Sector Commission (PSC) on its role in the election controversy. The other is a recent letter by an overseas based Guyanese. In another column, I will respond to that. This article here is about the falsehood peddled about the PSC.
It is morally incumbent on the PSC to immediately publish a rebutting delineation on what was said about it a few days ago by people purporting to be from leading civil society groups. Let me be graphic and pellucid here. I have been critical of the PSC during the long rule of the PPP.
Those columns are not two or three but several. They are there for people to read. You may have your reason for disliking the PSC. You may have your reason for criticising it. But the wild and nasty denial of the positive role of the PSC in protecting free and fair election in those five months, after the voting in the March 2 general election concluded, must be rejected by those who openly saw that role. This columnist saw that crucial intervention.
I am publishing my cell number 614-5927 and my email address [email protected] for executives of the PSC to contact me about the identification of the specific item so it can shape its response if it wants to. Here is what happened. There were four panelists on a Zoom programme, two of which were very critical of the PSC.
One of the persons from the transparency aspect, dismissed the PSC as a civil society entity and openly said he did not find it as a model to look to. The woman panelist was also dismissive of the PSC but went further, after stating her credentials as a civil society, that it was her group that was there from the beginning involved in exposing the attempts at rigging.
Only Timothy Jonas was circumspect in his words on the PSC. I will repeat what I wrote here in my column, “Some interesting words from a seasoned politician” of Thursday, March 17, 2022. I quote: “This country owes many civil society organisations an unpaid debt in 1997.” That was the year when civil society leadership under Yesu Persaud secured the intervention of CARICOM when the PNC refused to accept the election results. The superb period of civil society in that period of our history will be recorded in the second installation of Yesu Persaud’s autobiography which I think will be published posthumously. This is a fascinating country. What civil society did in 1997 was replicated in 2020 in identical ways. Can you imagine, the Private Sector Commission was instrumental in 1997 in saving electoral democracy and did the exact thing in 2020?”
From the first day of the election, journalist Leonard Gildarie and I were on Kaieteur Radio monitoring the election. It was Mr. Gerry Gouveia that constantly supplied us with information on the irregularities that were taking place. Mr. Gouveia and other PSC members were instrumental in their logistical support for the international observers particularly with transport facilities.
The crucial factor that allowed for the global acceptance of the election results was the insistence and conscience of the international observers. The leadership of the EU, Canada, the UK, CARICOM, Commonwealth countries, OAS countries and the United States were not in Guyana to assess for themselves the conspiracies that were taking place.
The international observers transmitted their daily findings to their respective governments. This facility was made possible through the relentless energy of members of the PSC. As stated above, Gildarie and I were in the studio of Kaieteur Radio and we were in daily contact with KN reporters.
We got no information, and we are not aware that there were other civil society organisations, apart from the PSC (and yes the PSC is part of civil society), on the ground exposing the election fraud from March 3. To deny the priceless role of the PSC in preventing a return to dictatorship on March 3 is a manifestation of a deeply flawed mind.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

(The last and crucial paragraph of my Sunday Column was inadvertently omitted. I have included it below so that readers can better understand the thrust of the article.
Sorry, space has run out. In the second part, I will argue that Aubrey Norton is only the second working class leader the PNC has produced in its history after Robert Corbin. Ptolemy Reid and Hamilton Green though from the working class, did not become leader of the PNC. And it is no accident that both Corbin and Norton became head when the PNC was in opposition.
The complete article can be found here https://www.kaieteurnewsonline.com/2022/03/20/irfaan-ali-and-aubrey-norton-ppp-and-pnc-a-class-analysis/ )